[HN Gopher] Google broke my heart
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Google broke my heart
Author : ingve
Score : 95 points
Date : 2026-01-05 21:52 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (perishablepress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (perishablepress.com)
| jmholla wrote:
| Sadly, I think your only option is to follow up with legal action
| against Google. On the positive side, I expect Google will react
| quickly to any legal action as this puts them at risk of losing
| safe harbor protections.
| mlyle wrote:
| They already lost safe harbor by declining to remove the
| content.
| riskable wrote:
| The problem is that Google isn't hosting the content. They're
| merely linking to it. There's no content to "take down."
|
| I don't think there's standing to sue. Linking to pirated
| content isn't illegal. They could be found guilty of
| _contributory_ infringement but that 's a tough case since
| the legal requirement is that Google needs to know for sure
| that it's pirated (which is impossible at scale).
| mlyle wrote:
| I've got mixed feelings about the DMCA, but its one redeeming
| value is that it's available to everyone. Deciding to make it
| readily accessible to large publishing interests but giving a
| random author the side-eye is not so great.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| My guess is, there were once more humans in the loop for the
| thing that the author is referring to. Since humans cost more
| than GenAI, GenAI replaced some or all of those humans.
|
| Never think of any sort of for-profit enterprise as anything
| other than a for-profit enterprise, and you'll never be
| heartbroken by one.
|
| Angered? Made to think you're living in a dystopia? Enticed into
| an absurdist world view? Absolutely. But you won't be
| heartbroken.
| ajaimk wrote:
| Feel like it went the opposite direction. Used to be automated
| before and now a support agent (low skilled) is handling it
| ladidahh wrote:
| My immediate guess after reading this was that this isn't a
| change at Google but a name issue. Jeff Star getting confused
| with Jeffree Star (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffree_Star).
| He's a lightening rod for controversy, and has been in the middle
| of a controversial public persona shift that probably has caused
| an uptick in all kinds of requests to google.
| junon wrote:
| Jeffree Star hasn't been relevant for a while, I'd imagine this
| isn't it, but something else entirely changing at Google, as
| the author claims.
| amelius wrote:
| Adding a PGP signature when releasing content prevents situations
| like this.
| throwaway150 wrote:
| With the way these multi-trillion dollar companies operate
| today and how the support staff act like corporate drones, I
| have no hope that attaching PGP signatures would lead to any
| different outcome. The response from the support would probably
| be going to like, "PGP what?"
| dekhn wrote:
| hire a lawyer, they know how to communicate with these teams.
| Trying to deal with Google Customer service when you are a
| technologically savvy and logical individual won't get far:
| GOogle's default attitude towards anybody who contacts them is
| that they are a scammer.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Even lawyers who own YouTube channels have problems. LegalEagle
| talked about their bad experience here:
| https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU
| dekhn wrote:
| It looks like he got the problem resolved by providing a
| spreadsheet with copyright violations and his original
| sources.
|
| THink of Google like how Cantrill described Ellison:
|
| You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a
| lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the
| lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there
| and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the
| lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about
| you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the
| lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle.
| paxys wrote:
| False DMCA takedown requests have always been a problem, and have
| massively surged in the last few years when more of the general
| public figured out the mechanics and started treating it as a big
| downvote button for the internet. This is also being done
| adversarially at a large scale, for example to suppress websites
| or YouTube videos containing certain viewpoints or to remove
| competition. So regardless of how Google has treated these
| requests in the past, they are absolutely right to want to verify
| that you actually are the content owner before taking further
| action.
|
| As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to come
| up with _something_ that proves ownership. Do your books have a
| publisher? Do you have a contract with the publisher? Or just a
| letter from someone at the firm confirming your work? Have you
| registered the work with the copyright office? Do you have proof
| of publishing on online portals?
|
| You aren't helping yourself or anyone else by anthropomorphising
| Google. It is not your friend who can "break your heart", or a
| "trustworthy helper on the Web", or a "trusted ally", but a large
| bureaucratic corporation. Treat it like the machine it is and you
| will get the results you want.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > As for how to do it - I don't see why it is hard for you to
| come up with something that proves ownership.
|
| It is pretty hard to come up with proof of ownership when
| Google refuses to tell you what forms of proof they will find
| acceptable. When I go to the DMV and need to prove my
| residence, the DMV clearly states what forms are acceptable
| proof. Google should do the same, _especially_ when they are
| asked what forms of proof are acceptable. Instead they gave
| this guy the runaround and ignored his question on how to prove
| ownership.
| paxys wrote:
| There is no passport or social security number or mailing
| address for the internet. Google can't tell you a definite
| proof they will accept because none exists, especially since
| copyright can be claimed on something as trivial as a line of
| text or a certain combination of bytes. It'll always be a
| judgement call on Google's part, and such a system will never
| be 100% accurate in either direction. If you want immediate
| and effective results then pay a lawyer.
| ajaimk wrote:
| A photo of the copy right page and your ID seems like just
| commons sense
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Isn't this what people are constantly asking for? Every time the
| topic of YouTube copyright strikes comes up, people angrily
| demand that Google verify that the person making the request
| actually has the right to do so.
|
| There's no way to design such a system that has zero false
| positives and zero false negatives; if you do no verification
| whatsoever you'll get tons of false positives, now it seems like
| Google has added a small amount of verification, at least
| sometimes, so now there are some false negatives.
| junon wrote:
| No, this isn't what anyone is asking for. Also, point to where
| Google did any verification?
|
| This seems like more than a false negative. Author clearly
| stated they were willing to jump through whatever necessary
| hoops. Google didn't seem to have the hoops to jump through.
| wvenable wrote:
| One can probably assume that this is the result of far too many
| illegitimate take down requests. Google almost certainly
| doesn't want to be in the business of arbitrating link take
| down requests.
| pamcake wrote:
| They have persistently architected and engineered the system
| to put themselves in that position.
| wvenable wrote:
| They have links to things, they did take down requests,
| take down requests got abused, now they don't do take down
| requests (as much).
|
| What does engineering have to do with that?
| QuercusMax wrote:
| The LegalEagle channel on YouTube had a similarly bad interaction
| when trying to get channels copying their videos taken down:
| https://youtu.be/PEA0JzhpzPU
|
| Google needs to fix this, it's really bad.
| verdverm wrote:
| Not bad enough for the profits and investors to care, perhaps
| even work against
| gowld wrote:
| Is the copyright registered?
|
| https://www.copyright.gov/registration
|
| While copyright registration is not legally required for
| copyright protection, it is the practical way to create usable
| evidence that the work is coprighted by you. Without it,
| challenging a copyright infringer is a more arduous legal
| process.
|
| Also, the author's website, and the books themselves claims that
| "Perishable Press" is the copyright holder, not "Jeff Starr".
| (Excepting the ones that don't state _any_ copyright holder.)
|
| https://books.perishablepress.com/downloads/digging-into-wor...
|
| In legal matters, clear and accurate communication is essential.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Sounds like LLM powered support. This is the sort of run around
| you can program into such systems.
| truelson wrote:
| I'm going to channel a little bit of @patio11 .
|
| First, worth reading this on how he deals with credit agencies
| and debt collectors:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... .
| There's gold in here for dealing with big globo-corp and how to
| get their attention.
|
| Ask Google for a certified mail address so you can send them the
| timeline of events that occurred. This is the shibboleth that
| lets them know you mean business and that by not responding, they
| may be facing legal action. DO NOT THREATEN or mention legal
| action. The managerial class doesn't act that way. Just signal
| you are building a case against them. Start with getting that
| certified mailing address... you may be surprised how they
| respond after just that request.
|
| If they don't respond, keep following up. Send them a timeline of
| events, proof of ownership even if they do not ask you what you
| need to prove ownership. Make it clear what this is costing you.
|
| But here's the thing, EVERY TIME I HAVE ASKED FOR A CERTIFIED
| MAIL ADDRESS, the globocorp gave me what i wanted, and I never
| had to follow up. Every time. They don't want to deal with actual
| legal action from "people who know what they are doing."
|
| It's a shibboleth. Like "Baa-ram-ewe." Use it wisely and
| honestly.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Who is this friendly corporate giant the author keeps referring
| to? He uses that phrase multiple times. Is he sucking up? Is it a
| reference to something?
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Note that if the claimant is a big player, Google is happy to
| only clarify how high is it supposed to jump. If they file a
| claim usurping _your_ copyright, you can do diddly about it most
| of the time. But if little people are trying to assert _their_
| rights, no, no can do, you can 't prove that you are you.
|
| And why should you, one of the little people, be able to prove
| anything at all? If a big player sues, Google is going to have to
| pay a staggering amount of money, thus they obey. If _you_ sue,
| its lawyers will drain you financially by protracting everything
| they can, so you don 't actually sue. If they take your claim,
| the content they take down stops bringing the sweet advertising
| revenue.
|
| And thus the computer sayeth Nay.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >simply check my account via Google Search Console, where I have
| verified that I am the owner for each of the above sites
|
| I doubt this is possible for the support agent to do.
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Especially where it mattered most, removing pirated copies of
| my books from Google search results.
|
| Make your books available for free, and you won't have this
| problem. You can't expect people to pay for something that
| literally costs nothing once it has been created.
|
| May also sell paper versions. Some people like myself enjoy
| reading paper better and will pay for hard copy if they like the
| book enough or expect to refer to it often.
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(page generated 2026-01-05 23:00 UTC)